I’ve been suggested to use a tiling window manager like Sway since it allows for controlling windows with hotkeys, but I’m having trouble getting started. I installed it in Fedora and tried logging back in with SwayFX (since it has features like blurring) but after I’m just shown a wallpaper with a top bar, the top left shows a 1 and the top right shows the time. I don’t know what to do there. I tried looking up guides but didn’t find anything, can you link me some if you know of any?
I think the default mod key is the ‘super’ key (formerly known as the windows key). It might be alt actually, I don’t remember. Super + 1-9 switches between workspaces, which hold your windows. Shift + super + 1-9 moves a window to another workspace. you can find more key bindings by viewing $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/sway/config (or wherever config files go on your system).
Here’s some useful defaults for Sway: (the default mod key is meta, aka the windows key)
Lay-out:
When using split lay-out (these take a little getting used to):
Placing windows next to each other will put them in a “group” together, which you can see by them sharing the same blue title bar thing. Using these shortcuts changes how the windows in the group are represented.
I found getting windows in/out of the group I want, and especially splitting and re-arranging groups within groups, to be a little unpredictable, but after using Sway for a while you do get used to it.
Forgot one thing: that top bar is also entirely configurable. It’s called waybar, and you can find the docs here: https://github.com/Alexays/Waybar/wiki/Configuration
Pretty much everything in Sway is configurable, as most of it is just written in a config file. You can use different application launchers (fuzzel, for example), you can add a notification centre like swaync, or just customise waybar with whatever modules you want. I think you can even switch out waybar for something else, but I haven’t tried that myself.